The new school year is just around the corner and what better way to start it off than a back to school party!! We did this one year in my neighborhood, and the kids had an absolute blast!! And the overall cost was very low, so this doesn’t really break the bank. While planning your back to school party, you want to consider whether you are having an outdoor or an indoor party. We had ours completely outside.
1. Invitations
To make your back to school party invitations,use brown paper grocery bags, cut them down to card size. Fold them into a card, with the store’s emblem inside. Take a sheet of printer paper cut the same size. Put the paper inside the card. Use a hole punch and punch three holes down the “spine” of the card. Take some yarn, or plastic string and loop throughout the holes and tie on the end. This will look like a miniature book once done. On the outside of the book, write,” Back To School Party”. You can also draw a picture of a school or a bus or use stickers to dress it up some. Inside write your usual info, name, date, time, RSVP and anything they may need to bring. We asked that each child bring a book , could be new or used, and a white tshirt.
2. Setup
Our school party had several game stations, you can add or delete any you don’t wish to do. Using the computer print off the school schedules, if you have a big turnout you can divide the children into two groups and print the schedules that way. Each school schedule should have the names of the class and what time it starts. When the children arrived give them their school schedules and asked them to go to their first class. Each station had a poster board(but you can also use old boxes) with the class name. Ex: Art Rm.101, Gym Rm.423, Math Rm.857, Recess, Lunch Rm.787, Science Rm. 248 and Reading Rm. 183.
Make sure you designate a bell ringer. This person will ring a bell when school starts, each time the children are to change class and when school ends. They all took Recess and Lunch together. While settting up your school stations, make sure you leave plenty of room between them.
3. Stations
Art Rm. 101: Tye dye shirts is the art project the children do in this station. You can easily find directions on the web as how to do these. After dying the shirts make sure to lay them out flat to dry. Once dry, the children used fabric markers and signed their names to each others shirt. Some parents may not feel comfortable having their child’s name on a shirt, so feel free to omit this. The end result was all the children signed each others shirts so there were several names on each shirt.
Gym Rm.423: Crab soccer is the game that the children do in this station. First outline a field (remember to do this ahead of time). You can do this with spray paint, or cones. Make sure you have two goals. Divide the children into two teams. You can use a regular soccer ball or make it softer by using a bunch of old plastic grocery bags waded into a ball and secure with duct tape. Object of the game is to walk like a crab on all fours, but not like a dog, and kick the ball into your goal. Team with most points wins.
Math Rm.857: Placemats and Friendship bracelets are on the lesson plan for this school room.
A. Place mats: Precut geometrical shapes of all different colors and sizes ahead of time. And precut pictures of things that they would need to do in order to get ready for school each morning, EX: Brushing teeth, brushing hair, getting dressed, get backpack ready, pictures of a note with signatures(for all papers signed), eat breakfast and a picture of a school bus. Each child is given a piece of construction paper. Tell them to find a picture of each thing they need to do to get ready for school. Have them paste the pictures on the construction paper, in the right order. Then ask the children to find 4 squares, 3 triangles, 2 rectangles, 3 circles and 1 octagon and paste them on the border around the pictures. Then use clear contact paper and seal the mats front and back.
B. Friendship bracelets: The children have to count the beads and then put them on the swivels. Ball Bearing Swivels can be found in the fishing department. Take a swivel,open up one end put 3 or 4 small beads, fasten them to another swivel and closed it up.
Lunch: Take an old refrigerator box and cut some windows in it. Place it over a table and this makes it look like a sandwhich “cooler” that the children have at school. Place brown paper bags at the beginning of the line, have the children take a bag, write their name on the outside and then go down the line to fill their bag. Some ideas to use for school lunch are: sandwiches, chips or veggies, fruit or fruit snacks or pudding and a drink box.
Recess: Some ideas for recess could be dodgeball, basketball, red rover, water balloons,etc. You can pretty much pick any kind of game for them to do recess with.
Science: Balloon rockets made out of 20 oz bottles, balloons, baking soda, and vinegar. Fill the 20 oz. bottle half way with vinegar. Place several scoops of baking soda into the balloon. Stretch the mouth of the balloon to cover the mouth of the bottle. Ask the children what they think will happen. Pull the balloon up so that all the baking soda inside falls into the bottle and watch the balloon get full of air!
Reading: Use the books the children brought in and have a book swap. Each child gets to pick out a book to keep.
Make sure to try out each of the things listed above beforehand so you know what exactly to expect with each station. This will come in handy when trying to figure out how long each school class station should last.
You can make it even more memorable by having back to school goody bags. Each bag can contain pencils, pens, erasers, rulers, glue sticks or anything else that may fit into a brown bag. Have fun with your Back to School Party and start off your child’s school year with a bang!
